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netboot on the Pi 4 is only going to be added in a future firmware update. Netboot is critical to the operation of our cloud, as it prevents customers from bricking the servers. Our dreams were shattered.

This is unfortunate, its something I use a lot. Guess I'll wait to get a Pi4.

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The big news is that from a hardware perspective netboot is possible. That has not always been the case.

But has been the case since the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B IIRC.

Yeah, we just had to wait for firmware.

I wonder if they could have used something like petitboot? That way they don't depend on Pi4 firmware for netbooting. It does require a sd card, but it's read only and tiny.

There is also iPXE, where a solution would be to use a small ipxe iso/lkrn and combine it with a boot loader written to a sd and then bootstrap the system over the network from there.

http://ipxe.org/appnote/buildtargets

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